Pieces of Ancient History
A fisherman and his son found the remains of a canoe once used by ancient Polynesian people.
Courtesy of © Vincent Dix/Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This carved piece of an ancient Polynesian canoe was found in a creek on the Chatham Islands.
When a fisherman and his son on an island in the Pacific Ocean found some pieces of wood in a creek, they thought they might be able to build something out of them. But when they started holding the pieces together, a shape began to form—the shape of a boat. It turned out the wood had once been part of a canoe that may have brought the islands some of their very first residents.
The father and son, Vincent and Nikau Dix, live in the Chatham Islands. The islands are about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the nation of New Zealand in a part of the world called Polynesia. Beginning thousands of years ago, people set out in large canoes called waka and settled on many Polynesian islands, including the Chatham Islands. Pieces of waka have been found in other parts of Polynesia, but the Chatham Islands discovery is turning out to be bigger and more important than the others.
©Courtesy of Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Conservators search for pieces of the Polynesian waka that was first discovered by Vincent and Nikau Dix.
After they’d found several pieces of the waka, Vincent and Nikau contacted researchers, who eventually unearthed 450 pieces in total. Archaeologist Justin Maxwell says no one has ever found so many parts of a single waka before. Some of the wood is beautifully carved and decorated with bits of shells and a type of black rock called obsidian. The discovery also includes strings from rope and some material that may have once been part of a sail.
Courtesy of Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This fiber may have been part of a rope that was attached to the waka.
The waka was probably built and used by the Moriori people, who were the first to settle the Chatham Islands. They arrived a little over 500 years ago.
Still, experts haven’t confirmed how old the waka is. They’ve received permission from the Moriori people to determine the age of the wood using a technique called carbon dating.
“No matter how old it is, we can’t overstate how incredible [this discovery] is,” Maxwell told the Guardian. “It is by far the most important discovery in New Zealand, possibly Polynesia, and it will go down as one of the most important finds of all time in Polynesia.”
